I’m thinking about soulmate marks

We all have the code of first words, right? Greyed or scratched out means that the soulmate has died. Great fun for Taako-angst when he believes his soulmate died before he was born.

Hear me out on this one:

Updating soul marks

If your soulmate hasn’t been born yet, the words are just… random looking blobs in a rainbow of colours. When the soulmate is born, the blobs transform into this weird line of jagged thickness. Of course Faerûn hasn’t invented sound visualisation technology, but we’d recognise it as a recording of their voice, saying the words.

That line may or may not be their favourite colour. I’m still noodling with this bit.

Finally and at last, Kid Soulmate learns to write. The one who’s been waiting gets to see their shaky, first attempts at writing. Reading the words for the first time. As they age, the writing improves, etc. And when they’re finally said, they turn gold.

Kravitz died millennia before Taako was born. So for his entire living existence, he had twelve rainbow blobs on his arm (or wherever). As a Reaper, he doesn’t bother looking. For centuries, they’re just… blobs.

And then, two hundred years (or so) before the Crystal kingdom, his mark itches as it changes. He looks at it for the first time in roughly two thousand years.

It’s become a jagged line. Unbeknownst to Kravitz, Taako has just taken his first breath in another planar system, somewhere in the uncharted multiverse. Istus, of course, keeps her mouth shut in regards to any of his questions. She’s a little salty about his diatribes about fate and true love etc. when he literally died before his destined love was born.

It’s up to you about the headcannons regarding Elf education, but I rather imagine they’re a little relaxed about literacy. 

A decade passes. More than a decade. Kravitz has been watching his mark like a hawk and finally starts to see words form in careful, slow handwriting.

And then you take your pick between:

Yo, thug! What’s your name, I’m ‘bout to tentacle your dick.

OR…

Hail and well met. My name’s Taako and you look like you’re made out of salt.

Meanwhile, for Taako’s age plus a hundred years, he’s been living with these grey, crossed out words on his hide.

What the fuck is wrong with the three of you?

I mean… you can’t argue with that kind of match, but let’s rub it in.

Kravitz is a Reaper. His status as living is strictly technical and dependent entirely on which plane he’s in. Goes to the prime material plane for work? Boom. Alive. Goes back to RQ? Dead again.

So Taako’s words are randomly going to black and legible to faded and crossed out and back again. Drives him bonkers. Especially when he’s in that null suit and can’t fucking scratch it.

The crystal golem has another reason to pause and seemingly stare at Taako. And -sure- Taako could draw a correlation between this golem’s appearances and disappearances in the lab to the itching on his arm, but everything else going on distracts him.

Then he eats a chunk of Merle’s crystallised arm. And hears the words he never thought he’d hear. And he feels the words itch for the last time.

Comedy fucking gold, my friends. Comedy gold.